


A heart that's not walking away

by AutumnHobbit



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Superman (Comics)
Genre: ...seriously this is nothing but friggin stupid levels of fluff y'all, ...wow this is stupid, Angst and Fluff, F/M, Family, Fluff, In that magical AU where everyone gets along, Jason and Kara are married, Sort of humor-ish?, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, also sort of angsty, batfam, batfamily, how did that happen? You'll never know., i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 12:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8533045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnHobbit/pseuds/AutumnHobbit
Summary: "Am I dead?" Jason croaks."No, but you're going to wish you were." Tim says pleasantly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I have had a really sucky year, but an especially sucky week--my grandpa passed away last Sunday, and today was his funeral. So to cheer myself up, I've been writing a thing.  
> Now, first off I will say that I ship Jason/happiness and fixing his life, mostly. But I kinda low-key ship JayKara, and I was kinda surprised there wasn't much on AO3--or anywhere, for that matter--about them. So I decided to write smth. And if you are expecting a really deep, well-written take on how a relationship between a borderline criminal and a fiery superhero develops despite their respective protective father figures, you have come to the wrong place because I am done and this is all I'm capable of writing. Bleh. Ah well. Hormones. Maybe somebody'll like it.  
> Title is from Ships In The Night by Mat Kearney because I am cliche as heck and I love that song so fight me.

Jason wakes up tucked like a burrito into one of the gurneys in the medbay in the cave, with a jolt that sparks mildly annoying, _paralyzing_ pain in his stomach and ribs. He stiffens, shifting his back to ease back down slowly as a hoarse groan escapes him. He squints, trying to glance around through the haze while flinching at the pain, the bright lights in the medbay, and how _frikkin' dry_ his nose is from the cannula currently supplying pure oxygen to his aching lungs. His eyes light on a caped figure, minus any headgear with longish black hair, back turned and clacking away at a keyboard so hard he swears they must be trying to break the silly thing.

"Am I dead?" Jason croaks at Tim, raising a brow in confusion when his voice sort of fades out into a rasp halfway through the sentence.

"No, but you're going to wish you were." Tim says pleasantly, and Jason blinks his eyes, closing them tiredly and trying to catch his breath. All he did was speak half a sentence and wake up. Geez. Though he does wonder what the hell Tim is talking about, despite the pain he's already so tired that he thinks maybe he can go back to sleep...

A very familiar voice grits through clenched teeth. "Jason. Peter. Todd."

Every single one of Jason's muscles tighten. He squirms faintly, glaring pleadingly at Tim's turned back. "Timmy..." He begs.

"Nope." Tim pops the 'p' sound and continues clacking the keys, unmoved. Jason glares weakly at him, before steeling himself and rolling over to face the smoldering gaze of his wife. "Heyyyy, Kara...." He mumbles meekly.

"What. The _hell._ Were you thinking last night." Kara asks, low and deadly, and Jason winces. He doesn't...actually remember what happened last night, exactly. Though that may have something to do with the headache that's been pulsing behind his eyes since he woke up, come to think of it. Which is currently only being exacerbated by Kara's voice. He loves her, but. Damn.

"...last night?" He croaks innocently, hoping she'll have mercy on him due to his current helplessness. He knows her better than that, though, and steels himself for more headache.

"When you were an _idiot,"_ Kara hisses, and before Jason can open his mouth to attempt to inform her that that _really_ doesn't help him narrow down what she's talking about, she stomps closer to the bed and pokes him very gently in the chest. Maybe it's the drugs he's likely on, but he almost bursts out laughing at the combination of the feather-light touch with the look of pure murder on her face. She gently jabs him for emphasis as she snarls, "You. Me. Batman. Crane. Ragdoll. Last night."

Oh yeah. Now Jason remembers. Sort of.

He _vaguely_ remembers agreeing to help Bruce with taking down Crane's latest operation, only to discover that Ragdoll was apparently working with Crane, which he only realized after Ragdoll had somehow managed to stab him something on the order of five times and drop him off a staircase. Glancing down now, he sees bandages woven thick across his torso. He can feel pulsing heat beneath, where his skin is pierced, and flinches, drawing a breath in slowly. 

"You..." Kara is hyperventilating in her rage now, and Jason tries to brace himself. "You colossal _moron_ , I don't--" She makes a sound that's a cross between a hiccup and a snort, "--I can't. Why can't you ever admit that you need help, you selfish, stubborn--"

Oh. Jason now remembers that half the reason he's lying injured is because he refused to tell Batman what was going on, and had insisted on scouting ahead alone. He had been there, and of course Bruce had tracked him because the man was a neurotic asshat, and he supposed that Bruce and Kara had hauled his ass to safety, but...

"All you ever think about is your damn ego, isn't it? Can't be seen with those Bats or superheroes! Look at me, I'm the Red Hood and I don't care how suicidal I am anymore because I always effing survive, right!?"

And Jason flinches--and blinks back stupid tears, because his body is treacherous and stupid and he's too much of a damn sap and _why the hell isn't he over this by now?_

It shouldn't bother him anymore. It really shouldn't, that they doubt his love and he doubts theirs, and he both has a death wish and has none. But he's tired, and hurting, and he can't be tough right now. He can't.

"Kara," Tim says sharply, and the shrill scrape of a chair being pushed back echoes, and then footsteps come clacking beside Jason, and Jason blinks his watery eyes to look at Tim as his younger brother adjusts the bag connected to the IV in his arm. He can tell by Tim's eyes that he's tired and on edge, but his gaze slightly softens when his eyes meet Jason's. He shoots a stern look over in Kara's direction, and Jason almost hesitantly follows the gaze, afraid to look at her.

Kara's mouth is open, her eyes darting from Jason to Tim and back. Jason feels a jolt of guilt run through him when he sees her blue-green eyes start to fill, and her hands go to her mouth and then down and then back again. "I...Jay, I..." She chokes, glancing lightning-quick at the bandages and immediately looking away before stumbling back a step. "I...I'm sorry, I..." She suddenly pivots.

"Kara!" Jason almost whines, grabbing for her arm. He manages to grasp her wrist with the tips of his fingers, and pulls her back. _"Please."_ He chokes.

She stays frozen for a moment, pulling against him, and despair pumps through Jason; he can't stop her, he's not anywhere near physically strong enough, and if she leaves he's always, _always_ afraid she'll never come back, even though she's been nothing but loyal. (He supposes he can't help it; _he_ wouldn't stay, if he were her.)

He doesn't want her to go. He doesn't want her to be scared. He doesn't want her to _cry._ Especially not because of _him._

She stands for a moment longer, and Jason wishes she couldn't hear how his heart's pounding against his ribs, how _scared_ he is, how little faith he has in her. He drops his gaze, loosening his grip.

"Please," he whispers wetly.

Her grasp tightens back up almost at the same instant that she whirls and _crumples_ over him, buries her face in his collarbone and wraps her arms around his shoulders and _sobs_. Full on _sobs_ , and Jason is well and truly panicking now. He has fucked up. _Majorly_. He shifts his hands to rub her shoulders as she clings to him, feeling frantic as he tries to figure out what he's supposed to do when she just starts sobbing harder. He's shushing her and whispering nothing, and he has no idea what the hell he's doing but he doesn't want her to cry and he doesn't know what he did to hurt her so badly and he's scared to death to find out.

"Shhh, baby," he soothes weakly, moving his stroking to her hair when tears keep soaking his skin. "Shhhh. S'okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

She gives a choked, half-hysterical laugh. "You...don't even know what you did," she gasps.

"It doesn't matter! I'm still sorry!" Jason insists earnestly. He hears Tim give a strangled squeal, and directs a quick glare at the little interloper--who just grins and holds a finger to his lips and slinks back into the background of their little scene--before turning back to his wife, who's raised her head from his chest to look up at his face. He glances down, feeling his chest clench at her red eyes and the tear-streaks running down her face--and also wondering when she'd wound up practically in the gurney with him, curled up next to him and half resting on him.

"I'm sorry, too," she mumbles, still wetly. "You didn't deserve that, I just...." Her voice dips, shaky. "I was really scared."

Jason raises an eyebrow in Tim's direction...which raises even higher when he sees that his younger brother is meeting his gaze seriously, his eyes unsmiling. "Your lung collapsed, Jason. Bruce released the pressure while he and Kara were rushing you back here, but you stopped breathing for quite a bit and we were worried because we couldn't get you to start again. And you'd lost a lot of blood and it took quite a few units for for you to stabilize."

Oohhh. Well. Jason closes his eyes and pulls Kara in, cradling her head against his neck. She closes her eyes and presses closer, her eyelashes tickling his throat.

"I'm sorry," he says again, his throat tight. "To you, and Bruce. I should have called you, I just..." he sighs. "It's just...it's hard. For me. To, you know, rely on...well." He gulps. 

Kara lets out a long, shaky exhale. "I know. I just..."

"...Don't want him to be stupid?" Tim calls offhandedly from across the room, at roughly the same time that Kara says, "...Don't want to have our baby alone."

Jason is all primed up to snap at Tim when his brain suddenly re-engages, and his jaw drops. His head snaps over to look at Kara. "...W-- _What?"_ He asks stupidly.

Kara blinks up at him almost shyly through her lashes, her cheek resting on his chest. "Um. I kind of..."

A screech echoes through the Cave, and Jason almost flies a foot into the air. He whips his head around to look at Tim. "Yes!" His idiot brother cheers, pumping his fist in the air. "I'm an uncle! Dick owes me fifty bucks!" He bounds off towards the stairs, still whooping.

Jason slowly glances from Tim back down at Kara, and she laughs and reaches up to gently tip his chin up so that he closes his mouth. Which turns out to be pointless, because Jason immediately starts incoherently stammering.

"It's not... _that_ shocking, is it?" She asks a bit hesitantly, sounding vaguely scared, and Jason remembers every single time he hid under the table while his father screamed at his mother for daring to get pregnant and saddle them with a worthless little brat to have to take care of...so maybe he's a little bit frantic when he immediately squeaks out a, "No, no, no," pulling her closer as he does. "Never," he swears, meaning it. His eyes move down her body of their own accord, and he realizes looking at her that he can...actually see a little bit of a difference in her shape. Just the barest hint of a slight curve in her lower abdomen. He hadn't noticed it before, but now it kind of steals his breath.

But that means...

"Wait...how far along are you!?" Jason asks, in somewhat of a panic. He's partially thinking of how short a time nine months is, anyway--and that's _if_ there aren't complicating factors having to do with human-alien genetics and he doesn't even know how long Kryptonian pregnancies generally last, and oh _hell_ does Clark already know and _what the shit,_ does _Bruce..._ and he's partially thinking of all the dangerous things Kara has done in the past few months...hell, in the last _week_ , and he's pretty sure he's starting to hyperventilate. Kara's hand is on his cheek and sliding back to the nape of his neck and she's talking but he has no clue what she's saying, and he's kind of just. Wow. He doesn't even know. He kind of wants to cry. And scream happily. And faint. Not necessarily in that order.

"...hey. Jason. Hellooooo." He blinks, and forces himself to breathe so that the three Kara's wavering in front of him recede into just one, who's beaming up at him with her sweet dimpled smile. "I, um...it kind of only occurred to me yesterday," she says, very sheepishly and blushing bright red. "I hadn't even thought about it, and I didn't even notice, I think it might be..." She furrowed her brow, trying to think. "...maybe, um. Three months? Maybe?" Her tone sounds almost hesitant as she waits for his reaction, seeming to steel herself.

Jason's free hand somehow winds up in his hair, pulling the black-and-white bangs down into his face before frantically scrubbing them away so they stick up. "...I. I can't--what. I." Jason clamps a hand over his mouth. Kara shifts slightly, drawing her knee up to his hip. She moves her hand almost absentmindedly to cup the gentle curve as she moves, and Jason almost chokes. He slides his hand down around her and lays his palm out across her stomach, his fingers splayed out.

"I'm..." He swallows, not taking his eyes off his hand--and more importantly, what's beneath it. _Who's_ beneath it. "I'm...a dad?" He breathes, his voice almost disappearing at the end of the sentence.

His eyes somehow move up to meet Kara's gaze, something desperate and painful and hopeful in them. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but his heart feels like it's skipping dozens of beats and he kind of wants to faint now.

But Kara's looking up at him, her eyes sparkling and her hesitant smile still managing to make him want to just collapse back and absorb it like the sun. She bites her lip, and then nods vigorously, laughing wetly and blinking as she starts crying again.

Jason shifts both hands to her cheeks and pulls her up to kiss her, long and hard on the lips before he starts pressing smaller kisses all over her face and her cheeks and her eyelashes and her forehead while she laughs and cries at the same time...and he knows he's probably crying like an idiot right now, too, but he has no ability to care. She's clinging to him just as tightly as he is, and kissing him, too--his jaw, his temple, his nose, bumping noses when she kisses his lips again, and he faintly hears sounds in the distance but he just keeps at it and laughs.

There are heavy footsteps, and an equally-heavy sigh. "Jason, what have I told you about the proper use of medical beds," Bruce asks tiredly as he strips the cowl off, trudging towards the computer as he grabs a water bottle off the table and takes a long swig.

"Don't judge, old man," Jason calls, snippy and shaky. "These little sessions provide you with grandbabies, so mind your own business."

In all his years as Robin and as the Red Hood, Jason has never seen Bruce honestly choke on water.

 

**Author's Note:**

> wowwwwww this is trashy.


End file.
